


Lucky Lad

by AbbyDebeaupre



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Family Fluff, Fraser's Ridge, Jamie thawing, Missing Moments, Roger in Daddy mode, drums of Autumn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 18:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16045709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbyDebeaupre/pseuds/AbbyDebeaupre
Summary: From a Tumblr prompt: Can we get a story about Jamie and Roger and Jemmy bonding?





	Lucky Lad

Bree awoke with a start, her whole body snapping into instant awareness, eyes alertly scanning the room. She’d fallen asleep at the table.  Her hands were wrinkled and red where they’d cradled her heavy head. She absentmindedly wiped the dampness (she would  _ not  _ admit she’d been drooling even in the privacy of her own mind) from her hands on her blue homespun dress. Experimentally, she felt her breasts before looking out the window to judge the position of the sun. 

 

“You’ve only been out a couple of hours. The baby is fine for now.” Her mother’s reassuring voice startled her into a yip. Claire was behind her stirring something in the cauldron set near the hearth. Bree rose, stretching out her long body, trying to alleviate the stiff and sore bits in her back.

 

“It’s funny how I now measure time by chest discomfort,” she noted, hearing Claire’s knowing chuckle in response.  

 

“It’s awfully quiet,” Bree observed. 

 

“Jamie is in the far field and Roger took the baby fishing,” Claire told her. Bree nodded and tidied up before heading down to the stream where she thought she just might find her menfolk. 

 

Bree caught a flash of white through the trees on the path overlooking their usual swimming hole. Thinking it was Roger, she diverted course and headed up instead of down the trail. The red glint of hair, however, told her she’d found her Da instead. 

 

She paused a moment, taking in the sight of him. With Roger’s return, they had managed to repair their relationship but it was still fragile and new to them both. They tended to watch when the other wasn’t looking, trying to fit the pieces of their family into some kind of recognizable shape. He was standing very still, a trick she’d observed when he took her hunting and while he never turned, never gave any indication he knew she was there at all, his arm came up in a beckoning gesture. As she got closer, she could see she’d interrupted him digging up some arrowroot for her mother. 

 

Brianna went to him, feeling his arm fall across her shoulder and he leaned into her ear, “Roger Mac is across the bank.” Jamie gestured with his chin and Bree saw Roger sitting with his back against a tree, the baby resting in the vee of his upturned knees, the fishing pole in use but nothing seemed to be biting in the wide pool that stretched out just below them. “The crossing’s easier if ye walk upstream to where it narrows, just mind the rocks, it’s slippery,” he told her and pressed a kiss against the side of her forehead. It was then she heard it, Roger’s sing song voice, pitched very low. 

 

“What’s that he’s saying?” Her Gaelic had improved considerably but she was nowhere near fluent.   

 

“Ach, it’s … well, mostly he’s been telling my grandson how canty and strong he is. Though, at the moment he’s telling the wee bairn that he’s no’ to worry, for family will see him safe.” Bree’s heart melted at the simple truth of the words, knowing how lucky their child was to have so many people in his life to love him. 

 

Jamie suddenly chuckled catching something Roger said. Bree gave him a quirk of her brow. “He confesses that his mother is a far better shot than him so he might just try ducking behind her if there’s trouble.” A few more minutes passed, the soft sounds of Roger’s one sided conversation reached them clear as a bell above the rustle of leaves and buzzing of insects. “Ye ken I was wi’ yer Auntie Jenny and Uncle Ian at Lallybroch when their weans were small?” Jamie asked, and she nodded in response. 

 

Before, when Young Ian was on the Ridge, Jamie almost never spoke of Scotland, but since returning from the Mohawk without him, she began to notice his need to talk of Lallybroch and his sister’s family more. It was like he was afraid that if he didn’t, he’d lose Ian’s memory, too. 

 

“After Paris, we -- your mother and I -- went home to Scotland. Jenny’s middle child, Kitty -- you will have met her?” Again, she nodded. “She wasna more than three months old, then. I would sometimes stay up wi’ her late nights, give Jenny a rest. Faith woulda been…” Jamie trailed off and Bree gently touched his arm bringing him back to himself. He smiled sadly. “We would curl up on the settee near the fire and I’d look at her, feel the weight of her trusting body in my arms.  I could tell her everything in my heart, everything I didna get the chance to say to yer sister and couldna bring myself to say to your mother.” 

 

She glimpsed a fleeting expression of alarm race across his features as if he was worried Bree would find fault with him or Claire. “No’ that I couldna tell her everything. Claire knows me like I know myself but there are times words settle like an anchor and she’d been through so much. I dinna think it fair to burden her too greatly on my account. It’s a comfort to be able to admit yer fears and whisper hopes and dreams to a wee one-- you have the benefit of saying such things out loud and the reassurance the information goes no further, aye?” Bree sighed and reached her hand out to his, clasping it tightly. 

 

“What’s he saying now?” she wondered. Jamie cocked his head a waited a moment. 

 

“He’s telling him that he’s been born into his mother’s homeland. History is in the making, America will carve its own destiny. To be grateful for this land that will sustain him, to judge each man by what he does no’ by how he looks. He hopes the lad will grow to be just like you because you are …” at this Jamie paused thinking. “Tis a particular word in the Gaelic. I dinna think there is an English word for it. Beautiful, mayhap, but he doesna mean looks, or no’ just looks...in your soul, I think, is the best I can do.”

 

Bree looked over just as the baby reached up and gripped Roger’s finger. Roger laughed. More words poured from him and he kissed his son’s cheek. Bree heard him call him a  _ bhalaich _ which she knew meant beloved boy.  

 

“Roger Mac is saying he understood how much he loved the lad the first time he felt the babe gripping his finger in his palm. Apologizes that he didn’t feel it the moment he saw him, but hopes the bairn will forgive him for only having eyes for you. He should know right up front that MacKenzies....” Jamie trailed off suddenly, and Brianna watched as he turned beet red and clamped his lips together tightly.  

 

“Da?” 

 

“You...ah, should go on down and find the crossing, it’s no’ far, just up around the bend,” her father told her, the color not receding an inch. 

 

“Nah-uh. You tell me what he said!” 

 

Jamie refused to look at her eyes. “That MacKenzie men are passionate by nature so he should accustom himself now to the sight of his Mam and Da…” Jamie’s voice abruptly dropped even lower, “to say nothing of his Grannie and Grandpa in ah…. amorous....well….The upshot of it is that he’ll come to appreciate his MacKenzie temperament when he falls in love with a lassie of his own. Roger Mac wants him to know he’s a lucky lad.” 

 

Bree’s laugher rang out and Roger’s head came up searching for her. When their eyes met, she noticed her goofy smile matched his, and then the light in his eyes changed and a hungry look crossed his features. 

 

“Hot enough for you?” She teased calling out to him, casting a glance at her Da who used the momentary distraction to take his leave before Roger noticed him too, flustered enough to have left the arrowroot he’d harvested at the foot of the tree. 

 

“Aye! The water is deep enough for you to jump on in. Come, hen, join us.”

  
  



End file.
